Dear GKD Members, ICT has recently been helping those in India who are visually impaired. The IT Industry can employ visually impaired persons in various functional responsibilities involving administration, front office, telephone operators, legal as well as medical transcriptionists, e-servicing as well as client servicing With appropriate training, those who are visually impaired can be employed at senior levels. One such training tool, called JAWS, and developed by a group of visually challenged persons from the US, is a screen-reading software, i.e. whatever is typed or appears on the screen is read out orally (in robotic voice and standard accent and pronunciation) to the visually impaired people. JAWS helps the blind people to learn to type in not more than 10 to 15 days after using the software and obtaining relevant training. Support in Braille is also available.
In India, Mr. Ram Agarwal, who is visually impaired, is selling JAWS. Mr. Agarwal has been aggressively arranging product demonstrations for those interested. Academically inclined visually challenged students also like doing research by "reading": books, newspapers and magazines since the material is read out for them in robotic voices. The Indian National Association for the Blind (NAB), Bangalore has been using JAWS to offer visually challenged persons an entry-level program to become familiar with computers. MS-Word, Excel, PowerPoint, email and Internet are offered under the aegis of 180-hour program duration. The Textbooks are transcribed into Braille. NAB's basic IT literacy program is affiliated to the National Institute for Information Technology (NIIT), which conducts a certification test; and upon successful qualification in the test imparts NIIT certification. Due to successful piloting of JAWS at the NAB, as well as attractive placements all those who have passed from NAB, there is renewed hope amongst the NAB trainees about their future prospects. Six women trained at NAB have recently been gotten jobs in reputable organizations. Per Indian law -- Persons with Disabilities (Equal opportunities, Protection, Rights and Full participation) Act 1965 -- jobs have to be reserved for the disabled people. Consequently the Indian Banks, Postal Department, Railways, Geological Survey of India, Central Excise and Customs have requisitioned NAB and even several private companies have deputed their visually impaired employees to be trained in IT using JAWS. The visually impaired people in India will remain forever grateful to NBA's pioneering efforts in imparting IT literacy to their people. Best regards, Chetan Sharma - Founder, Datamation Consultants Pvt. Ltd./Datamation Foundation 361 Patparganj Industrial Area, Delhi-110 092 (India) www.datamationindia.com Ph# 91-11-2167230/2167973/2169162/2168017 email : [EMAIL PROTECTED] ------------ ***GKD is solely supported by EDC, an NGO that is a GKP member*** To post a message, send it to: <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> To subscribe or unsubscribe, send a message to: <[EMAIL PROTECTED]>. In the 1st line of the message type: subscribe gkd OR type: unsubscribe gkd Archives of previous GKD messages can be found at: <http://www.edc.org/GLG/gkd/>
